How to Say “Good Morning” in Spanish (and 88 other Useful Spanish Words and Phrases)

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Knowing even a few Spanish phrases is really useful if you’re learning Spanish or planning to visit a Spanish-speaking country. Even more so if you’re living in such a country.

There are lots of good reasons to learn Spanish, and if you want to spend any length of time in regions where Spanish is spoken, here are some really useful Spanish words and phrases that can help you make the most of your visit.

If you want a clear structure for putting your Spanish into practice, take a look at the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. It’s a 90-day programme with weekly coaching calls, a private community and a focus on speaking from day one.

How to Say “Good Morning” in Spanish

“The morning” in Spanish is la mañana, but the usual morning greeting is buenos días, literally “good days”. You may also hear “buen día”, especially in parts of Latin America. “Buena mañana” isn't the standard greeting to learn, though you can wish someone a pleasant morning in a longer sentence.

If you’re into Spanish grammar, note that día is masculine despite ending in an ‘-a', so it's buenos días, not buenas días.

How to Say “Goodnight” in Spanish

As with buenos días, when you wish someone goodnight in Spanish, you say it in the plural: buenas noches. The same phrase covers the English “good evening”, while buenas tardes means “good afternoon”.

In English we generally don't say “goodnight” as a greeting; it's more often used when you or the person you're talking to are about to go to bed. Spanish is not like this – buenas noches can be used as a greeting as well as a farewell, provided it's the right time of day.

So when's the right time of day to use buenas noches? These greetings don't divide up the day exactly like English “afternoon” and “evening”: tarde starts after midday, while noche refers to night. Generally, use buenas tardes after midday and buenas noches later in the evening or at night. The changeover varies locally; sunset is a useful guide, not a fixed rule.

How to Say “Hello” in Spanish

We've covered “good morning” and “goodnight”, but we mustn't forget the most simple Spanish greeting of them all: hola, which means “hello”.

Hola, of course, can be said at any time of day, and it's a common way to greet someone in Spanish.

How to Say “I Love You” in Spanish

Spanish has two main ways of saying “I love you”.

A common choice is te quiero. The verb can mean “want”, but it also means “love”: here you're expressing affection, not making a demand. You can say it to a boyfriend or girlfriend, a friend or a relative.

Another verb for “love” is amar. Te amo often sounds more intense, but its use depends on the region and relationship. People can say it to relatives as well as romantic partners; te quiero is also a perfectly good way to express deep love.

How to Say “Happy Birthday” in Spanish

A birthday in Spanish is a cumpleaños, a combination of the words año, meaning “year”, and cumplir, which, among many other possible translations, can mean “to turn”, as in “to turn X years old”. On your fifth cumpleaños, you cumples cinco años (turn five). And to wish someone a happy birthday, you say feliz cumpleaños.

What about the song ”Happy Birthday”? Naturally, there's a Spanish version that uses the same melody – but different Spanish-speaking countries actually have their own versions of the lyrics. For example, here's the version you're most likely to hear in Spain:

Cumpleaños feliz,
cumpleaños feliz,
te deseamos (name),
cumpleaños feliz.

Our full guide to birthdays in Spanish goes through the other versions, including the Mexican Las Mañanitas, which is a different song altogether.

How to Say “Thank you” in Spanish

To thank someone in Spanish, simply say gracias.

If you're feeling particularly grateful, you can add emphasis with muchas gracias or even muchísimas gracias. The verb “to thank” is agradecer, and you can also say dar las gracias, “to give thanks”, and dar gracias without the las is valid too; neither form is restricted to thanking God.

How to Say “You're Welcome” in Spanish

English has several ways of saying “you're welcome”, and Spanish is no different. When you say gracias to somebody, one common reply is de nada (“it’s nothing”), though you'll also come across no hay de qué (“not at all”) and con mucho gusto (“with pleasure”). Learn that last reply with con. You may also recognise mucho gusto as a way to say “nice to meet you”; its meaning depends on context.

Despite what TV and movies might have made you believe, “no problem” in Spanish is not no problemo! Problemo isn't even a real Spanish word (it's problema), but even if it was, no problemo isn't the standard phrase to learn. Spanish does allow no before nouns in some constructions, so that isn't a blanket grammar rule. If you really want to literally say ‘no problem', say no hay problema, sin problemas, or ningún problema.

How to Say “How Are You?” in Spanish

A common way to say “how are you?” in Spanish is ¿qué tal?, which could also be translated as “what's up?” or “how are things?”

An alternative is ¿cómo estás?, or ¿cómo está? – the latter being more formal because it means you're addressing the other person as usted rather than tú.

When someone asks you ¿qué tal? or cómo estás, you can simply reply with bien to let them know you're okay.

How to Say “I Miss You” in Spanish

There are two common ways to say “I miss you” in Spanish: te extraño and te echo de menos. The former is generally more common in Latin America, while the latter is more common in Spain, although either would probably be understood in both places.

How to Say “Yes” in Spanish

“Yes” in Spanish is sí, although Spanish speakers have a tendency to say it over and over again in rapid-fire when they could have just said it once: ¡sísísísísísí!.

Make sure you write sí with the accent when you mean ‘yes'. Si without an accent can mean “if”. It has the same consonant and vowel, but the conjunction is normally unstressed in connected speech, unlike the affirmative.

How to Say “Tomorrow” in Spanish

Mañana, mentioned earlier, means both “tomorrow” and “morning”. This sounds like it could get confusing, but it's almost always clear from the context which one is meant.

If you want to say “tomorrow morning”, don't say mañana mañana! A standard way to say it is mañana por la mañana (tomorrow in the morning).

How to Say “Why” in Spanish

To ask someone ‘why' in Spanish, say ¿por qué? – literally “for what?”

To respond to ¿por qué?, you might need the word porque, which means “because”. They look and sound similar, but note that porque is normally unstressed in connected speech, while ¿por qué? has a stressed qué. (There's also the noun el porqué, which means “the reason”.)

A fun little expression you might find handy is porque sí, which literally means “because yes”. Porque sí is something you might say when someone asks you a question with ¿por qué? but you don't want to give a real explanation. It's the equivalent to responding to a “why?” question in English with the single word “because!” – it's a humorous way of answering without actually answering.

Numbers in Spanish

To master numbers in Spanish, first you need to learn how to count to twenty:

• 0 – cero
• 1 – uno
• 2 – dos
• 3 – tres
• 4 – cuatro
• 5 – cinco
• 6 – seis
• 7 – siete
• 8 – ocho
• 9 – nueve
• 10 – diez
• 11 – once
• 12 – doce
• 13 – trece
• 14 – catorce
• 15 – quince
• 16 – dieciséis
• 17 – diecisiete
• 18 – dieciocho
• 19 – diecinueve
• 20 – veinte

(Note that 16-19 are particularly easy to remember because they're simply formed by combining diez, ten, and a smaller number.)

Next you should learn the remaining multiples of ten:

• 30 – treinta
• 40 – cuarenta
• 50 – cincuenta
• 60 – sesenta
• 70 – setenta
• 80 – ochenta
• 90 – noventa
• 100 – cien

To fill in the gaps, just observe some examples and the pattern should be obvious:

• 21 – veintiuno
• 22 – veintidós
• 23 – veintitrés
• 31 – treinta y uno
• 41 – cuarenta y uno
• 57 – cincuenta y siete
• 58 – cincuenta y ocho
• 59 – cincuenta y nueve

When it comes to really big numbers, note that Spanish uses the long scale naming system, meaning that while a “billion” in English has nine zeroes on the end (which Spanish speakers call simply mil millones, a thousand millions), a billón in Spanish has twelve zeroes (what English speakers call a “trillion”).

On the subject of big numbers, you'll encounter different punctuation conventions: “1,000,000” and “1.000.000” can both represent a million, while “1,499.99” and “1.499,99” can represent the same decimal number. Check local usage when reading prices or forms. For current standard Spanish writing, use a thin space to group digits, as in “1 000 000”, rather than commas or full stops. Either a comma or a full stop is valid for decimals: “1499,99” or “1499.99”. Four-digit numbers normally need no grouping space.

Days of the Week in Spanish

The days of the week in Spanish are simply:

• Monday – lunes
• Tuesday – martes
• Wednesday – miércoles
• Thursday – jueves
• Friday – viernes
• Saturday – sábado
• Sunday – domingo

Remember that in Spanish, unlike in English, days of the week are normally not written with a capital letter, except at the start of a sentence or within a proper name.

Months in Spanish

• January – enero
• February – febrero
• March – marzo
• April – abril
• May – mayo
• June – junio
• July – julio
• August – agosto
• September – septiembre
• October – octubre
• November – noviembre
• December – diciembre

Like days of the week, month names in Spanish are normally lowercase too, with the same sentence-start and proper-name exceptions.

Colours in Spanish

Like English, Spanish has plenty of words for different colours. Some are specialised, such as the heraldic term azur; others name useful shades, such as fucsia (fuchsia). Start with these everyday colours:

• blue – azul
• yellow – amarillo
• red – rojo
• orange – naranja
• white – blanco
• black – negro
• brown – marrón
• green – verde
• grey – gris

Both anaranjado and naranja are normal words for “orange”. Which one you hear more depends on the region and speaker; neither is merely an outdated textbook word.

That's loads of vocabulary for one sitting, so don't try to hold all of it at once. Greetings, numbers and the days of the week are the ones you'll use on your first day in a Spanish-speaking country, and the rest will stick as you meet it. If you want more greetings in particular, we have 70 more of them, while the written accents that keep tripping people up have their own full guide.

Reading a phrase and recognising it when somebody says it at speed are different skills, and most phrasebooks leave a gap between the two. You can sign up for SpanishPod101 to close it, and our SpanishPod101 review covers what you get if you'd rather know first.

When you'd rather be holding a conversation than reciting a list, join the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp, where you get 90 days to reach a 15-minute conversation with a native speaker.